Sarathy Korwar - More Arriving [Limited Orange Vinyl LP]

The leaf label

£19.78

Genre: Jazz//World/Hip Hop
Format: LIMITED LP
Catalogue No.: BAY112VO
B/C: 843190011254
Release Date: 11 Feb 22 (back in)

UK INDIES ONLY – Limited edition transparent orange vinyl LP just 300 copies for the world.

The plaudits for Sarathy Korwar’s powerful More Arriving album keep coming with a nomination for Best Independent Album at this year’s AIM Awards alongside the likes of Nick Cave and Kim Gordon, with the winner to be announced on August 12.

The album was also nominated in the Songlines Awards for Best Fusion Album earlier this year, and Jazz FM put it up for their Innovation Award. More Arriving featured stongly in 2020’s end of year lists with MOJO awarding it their Jazz Album of the Year and Gilles Peterson shortlisting it for his Worldwide Awards. Gilles Peterson invited Sarathy to perform at the prestigious New York Winter Jazz Festival in January.

Korwar follows the album with Otherland, a four track 12” which will be released on Record Store Day’s August 29th drop. Once again, the words of the South Asian diaspora are key, with Kushal Gaya (Melt Yourself Down), Mirande and Mumbai hip-hop collective Swadesi all lending their voices to Otherland. ‘Birthright‘ features another brilliant, cutting turn from London-based poet Zia Ahmed, whose dark, provocative sense of humour shone through on album tracks Bol and Mango, and has been a focal point for Korwar’s live shows.

Born in the US, raised in India and resident in the UK, Korwar has established himself as one of the most original and compelling voices in the UK jazz scene, collaborating with the likes of Shabaka Hutchings (The Comet Is Coming), clarinettist Arun Ghosh and producer Hieroglyphic Being
Korwar’s debut Day To Day (Ninja Tune, 2016), combined the folk rhythms of India’s Sidi community with contemporary electronics and jazz textures, earning praise from the likes of Four Tet, Gilles Peterson and Floating Points
In 2018, he followed up with the live UPAJ Collective album, My East Is Your West (Gearbox), a critically-acclaimed take on the cultural appropriation of ‘spiritual’ Indo-jazz
Korwar has toured with Kamasi Washington, Yussef Kamaal and Moses Boyd
There is incredible dark humour at play with Zia Ahmed’s performace in the video for ‘Bol’
‘Mumbay’ is accompanied by an evocative video shot in the streets of Mumbai
Watch a short film about the album’s genesis, shot in Delhi
Other featured artists on the album include Delhi Sultanate, Prabh Deep, Zia Ahmed, Aditya Prakash, TRAP POJU and Mirande
Danalogue (The Comet Is Coming) co-produced ‘Mumbay’ and ‘Bol’ with Korwar

We live in divisive times. Multiculturalism rises hand-in-hand with racial tensions, and politicians seem powerless to even bring people within earshot of their convoluted message. It’s time for a different perspective.

On his second studio album, More Arriving, Sarathy Korwar blasts out his own vibrant, pluralistic missive for the world to hear. This is not necessarily a record of unity; it’s an honest reflection of Korwar’s experience of being an Indian in a divided Britain. Recorded over two and a half years in India and the UK, More Arriving draws on the nascent rap scenes of Mumbai and New Delhi, incorporating spoken word and Korwar’s own Indian classical and jazz instrumentation. This is a record born of confrontation; one for our confrontational times.

With this album, Korwar expands his politicised narrative to envelop the entire diaspora. “This is a modern brown record. The kind of record that a contemporary Indian living in the UK for the past 10 years would make,” Korwar says. “This is what Indian music sounds like to me right now.”

It all begins with the title: “More Arriving comes from the scaremongering around Brexit,” Korwar says. “It’s a tongue-in-cheek play on the fact that there are more people coming and you’ll have to deal with it!” Through this defiance, Korwar takes clear pride in the knotty mix of his identity – harking back to the new India of the Mumbai hip-hop kids, as well as identifying with London’s cultural diversity. “I want the idea of brown pride to come through,” he says. “My voice is one amongst a thousand, but this record is a snapshot of something much greater than myself. It’s the chance to send a message.”

CD: LP:
1. A1. Mumbay (featuring MC Mawali)
2. A2. Jallaad
3. A3. Coolie (featuring Delhi Sultanate & Prabh Deep)
4. A4. Bol (featuring Zia Ahmed & Aditya Prakash)
5. B1. Mango (featuring Zia Ahmed)
6. B2. City of Words (featuring TRAP POJU & Mirande)
7. B3. Good Ol’ Vilayati (featuring Mirande)
8. B4. Pravasis (featuring Deepak Unnikrishnan)

“A timely mix in its unusual parts and righteous defence of modern multicultural Britain”
#11 Album of the Year, The Wire

“Absolutely of the moment: a psychedelic, electronic, jazzy odyssey that deals with issues of racial identity. It’s fabulous”
4/5 The Guardian

“His rhythmically intense, entrancing vision adds a whole new spin to the Indo-jazz continuum”
5/5 Mojo

“A vibrant cacophony of Indian classical music, jazz and hip-hop that takes aim at cultural stereotypes and negative attitudes to immigration”
The New York Times

“This is the sound of the new British-Asian underground”
4/5 Songlines

“Korwar takes in the political and radical history of jazz as a voice of the disenfranchised, and applies it to the Indian diaspora experience in contemporary Britain”
The Vinyl Factory

“One of the best things we’ve been able to play on the radio for a very long time”
Gilles Peterson, BBC 6 Music